Wednesday, 9 January 2013

A New Beer Flavour Wheel

I
like the established beer flavour wheel, which was introduced in the 1970s by brewing chemist Dr Morten Meilgaard. It works well, it’s
easy to read and it goes into a lot of technical detail. But looking at the
wheel it includes compounds such as 2-Phenylethanol and Isoamyl acetate, which
are pretty technical pieces of information that aren’t exactly common knowledge
(2-Phenylethanol is a rose-like aroma and Isoamyl acetate is banana).

So
while I like that wheel, it’s not the most consumer-friendly. Doing some
research I found wheels for coffee, chocolate (both from here), wine (which is aroma-specific) and whisky,
which are easy to use and interesting and break down the tasting experience
into a simpler format, just giving recognisable flavours (mostly, anyway; I had
no idea what cineolic or camphoric were in the coffee wheel until I googled
them – like spicy, woody bay leaf or tea tree, I think).

When
I was working on Craft Beer World, I thought I’d try and rework the beer wheel
to see what I could do. Not as a replacement for the one we all know, but a
wheel which is more approachable for general drinkers; one which looks at the
specific ingredients and processes of beer, looks at esters and off-flavours,
considers mouthfeel, aroma, flavour and the general experience of beer. Not necessarily
one for brewers or the technical troubleshooters, I wanted a wheel aimed at looking
for the right word to describe how beer tastes or for figuring out what a
flavour is and where it might have come from.

It
was just an itch-scratching experiment to begin and I started throwing down
words and drawing big circles with lots of lines in and around them, but
gradually a useable wheel took shape. And that wheel had a nice flow of
flavours to it. So I sent it to my editor, who sent it to the (incredibly
patient...) designer, who put something together.

The
Beer Flavor Wheel (the book is written in American; or, more accurately, I
wrote it in English and someone translated it) I come up with is in the book, which
went to print this week and will be out in a few months. And here it is below,
the first thing I’m allowed to share from Craft Beer World. I’m really pleased
with how this wheel has turned out and I hope that it can be something which
drinkers find useful. What do you think?

It's a great idea Mark and would be really useful when trying to put a finger on that elusive smell or "flavor". What are the chances of getting some printed up as promo handouts for the book, or an extra insert?

I appreciate you've put a lot of time and effort into this Mark, and speaking as a scientist it looks the dog's whatsits. However, speaking as a beer lover, it's far too anal and geeky to be of any practical use - just imagine the bemused looks from fellow drinkers, when you get one of those out in a pub!

Just enjoy the beer for what it is; don't try to analyse it all the time!

Very sorry I missed this a few weeks ago - I've just finished putting together a zoomable beer flavour wheel based on the Morten Meilgaard wheel on Table & Vine.

http://northwestwarriors.org.uk/d3js/beer-wheel.html

It's mostly derivative at the moment (javascript is plundered, beer wheel has been around 40 years) but I hope to expand on it and use it on our beer festival website so that visitors can tag beers we're serving interactively.

Hi Mark, Interesting work. Sometimes we are people working in silos -time for some collaboration?Cheers,Jens EikenSee the Danish Beer Language: http://www.olakademiet.dk/default.asp?pid=45 - download the little booklet